May 18, 2011

Have you joined several social networks and wondered what to do next? Maybe you have been nudged, or even coerced into joining LinkedIn.com and then the family photo site on Facebook and finally Twitter for no good reason.

You filled out your LinkedIn profile as a reasonably respectable historical career document and may have even done a passable job at positioning and branding as well. Eventually several business colleagues have had you recommend them or have recommended you on LinkedIn.

Now what? Or, perhaps more aptly, so what? This is where most people except for sales types, recruiters and the unemployed stop cold. It is natural that an executive would have reasonable concern about inappropriate visibility. Most professionals worry for their over exposure on social networking sites and are therefore be reluctant to use LinkedIn even if they knew what to do next.

There is good reason to step cautiously into the social networking milieu as these sites are not private and nor well-screened and protected like a BlueSteps.com. If you are on LinkedIn over 42,000,000 other professionals have access to your profile.

It may be comforting to executives from all the Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn. However your company’s Social Media policies and your concern for the impression your LinkedIn profile makes back at headquarters can create misgivings about the value and nature of Social Networking.

Social Networking is not a passing fancy or fad but rather is now becoming an integral tool for business and career advancement. While proceeding with caution, there are some key ways to leverage Social Networking sites, especially LinkedIn, to enhance business and career opportunities.

Here are some ideas on how to find the best connections to build your network once you have created your profile on LinkedIn and other sites because that’s what’s next.

Find Lost Connections

Obviously, to build business and career opportunities on any social networking site one must be connected to people. It is an imperative to have at least 150 to 300 connections on any Social Networking site to be able to do business. Typically it is more difficult to get to that number on Linked than Facebook and Twitter. On Facebook if you can find someone, they will typically accept your friendship request and with Twitter you can “follow” practically anybody.

The best connections to start with on LinkedIn, aside from the obvious immediate colleagues, business friends, and fellow alumni, are all the people you haven’t stayed in touch with or have lost their contact information. Consider them low hanging fruit. They knew you and you had a relationship with them. Further, they are able open doors to opportunities for you outside the inner core networking circles that you have built around yourself.

Ironically, those lost connections, if you are in job search mode, may even enable you to revisit that fork in your career path you faced from years ago and allow you to try the road not chosen at the time.

Create New Relationships from Previous Employment

LinkedIn has a Search People function that they promote to recruiters for obtaining back door references on professionals. In fact they call it Reference Search. This search function enables you to find people working at a previous employer the same time that you were. You can generate the same results but for purpose of building your network of connections.

Insert the name of the organization in the search box, and the range of dates that you were working there. LinkedIn will pull up all the people who were employed there at the same time and are connected to you by 2nd or 3rd degrees. This process works best if you are already connected to around 100 people as the search results will generate a sufficient number to choose among.

It is irrelevant that you didn’t know those people at the time you worked there. They may have been at a higher level or in a different division. The basis for the relationship is the commonality of having been somewhere at the same time. It is the “fellow travelers” syndrome in real life that also works online. This enables you to extend an invitation to a relative stranger but from the same company to connect with you and they most likely will.

Facebook doesn’t bother with who you are connected to but how well you do the advanced search. Twitter it too new to even try this as there aren’t enough people yet. In all Social Networking, the discrimination you exercise in who you choose to connect to is what drives business and career opportunities. The quality of the connection is the key.

Initiate a Group

Linked brags about having over 300,000 groups. Since they are easy to start and run (I own three) and can actually give you great visibility for business relationships than being a joiner of other people’s groups. The key is to choose your group’s focus/topic/title with great care for the kinds of connections you want to make as the group will grow virally based on the topic without you having to do much.

Facebook has even more groups that are even easier to start than LinkedIn’s. But, the ultimate advantage to using LinkedIn is that more professionals are on it and want to be on it for its reputation compared to Facebook.

Eventually, your Linkdin or Facebook group can become a mailing list and audience for your future e-book, white paper and/or blog postings as you build your reputation online . As group leader, the position enables opportunistic self-promotion or promotion of your company and services.

Link to Like Kind

Who you connect to is crucial unless you plan to connect to tens of thousands like I have as an indiscriminate bid for volume access to provide to my clients through my connections. Most executives choose to limit their connections to people they know or get to know. The latter is the key in cultivating a high caliber base of connections. Who do you want to get to know to enhance your business and career?

As an EVP, CEO, CFO, CMO, etc doing an Advanced People Search on all executive level titles in your industry would provide a list to target as worthwhile connections. Again, seeking commonality, this time of industry and field, opens doors to new connections when you proceed to contact them by InMail or through a mutual connection.

The goal of networking is to be able to call on a wide and deep base of people in your sector, field and industry for professional help. The bigger your online Social Network the better given because there is no need to maintain it with frequent attention. This is best achieved by connecting to people using commonalities. Having something in common instills an instant sense of connection without having to do much about it until you need it.

The obvious example of commonality is being able to tap into your university’s alumni database expecting to be well received. The commonality of the alumni community is driven home from the first day through graduation and reminded at every reunion.

Build an Employee LinkedIn Networking Base

The smartest thing any executive can do is get out in front of the trend and lead it to their business advantage. This goes for LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. You employees are on it, right? Then you should be too with gusto. They aren’t job hunting just because they have embraced Social Networking. If they are going to leave, they will regardless. Encouraging their participation on Social Networking sites brings advantages to your business.

First of all, encourage recommendations among your all your employees. If everyone is saying laudable things openly about their fellow employees that sends a clear message to customer, analysts, funders and competitors, who are all on LinkedIn. It implies that company is a great place to work and with great products and services.

Secondly, encourage employees to build networks and connections not just with each other but throughout LinkedIn. This inevitably will bring residual benefits to your business through access to talent for recruiting, broadr business development and greater sales opportunities.

They are going to do it anyhow so why not harness the energy and momentum by having employees follow the company Twitter posts and join the company’s Facebook group. This attracts their business friends and followers to you as well.

Knowing What to Ask For

There is an underlying assumption in all of the above is that you have clear, feasible business and career goals in mind for all your use of Social Networks. Eventually you will want to make use of these connections, friends, and followers. But do accumulate them well in advance of your need as Social Networks take consistent application of time and energy to grow.

As Harvey Mackay’s book title states you must “Dig the Well Before You're Thirsty”. Then when the time comes to activate your Social Network, it will provide.

May 04, 2011

Many senior executives even those in the technology sector are dubious about the value proposition of building a and extending their brand online. I typically get strong push-back articulated as “What’s the ROI?” and “Prove it to me.”

Remember the world as we knew it 5 years ago? Executives said to me then, with good reason, that they have a great network, and they find all their positions though a close circle of contacts and executive search firms. This is no longer the case.

Times Have Changed

In the current economy, employment is like musical chairs. If you are left without one when the music stops, you may be left standing a long time as fewer chairs remain and more are removed. The choice for the remaining chairs may go to the younger, up and coming candidates, or those willing to relocate, or take a level and pay cut. Further, you may be in an industry so small that there are limited options within it.

The contraction of job opportunities especially at the highest levels eliminates the recruiter calls and renders your network fallow. Companies are doing far fewer, quiet, cautious searches if any at all. The search business in general is down 40% year over year. You contacts are looking out for opportunities as well.

At the C-level you now have to work to make opportunities happen. Consider the fact that every opening posted receives hundreds of responses even at the executive level. With those kinds of numbers, job boards are useless at the senior level.

The Networking Job Search

The value of connections, contacts and access in an economic downturn cannot be underestimated and that includes cultivating relationships with search professionals. All opportunities move to word of mouth and referrals during a contraction. Those that have worked hard to build and cultivate a large quality network are in immensely better shape as more connections means more open doors. In a downturn you cannot have too big a network.

The problem with networking is that after you have made the initial rounds of all your contacts letting them know you are looking is that there is no “what’s next”. You make the rounds again and come up with even fewer prospects. What is missing to answer “what’s next” is a strategy and methodology to expand your network. This is typical.

After running through their contacts, most professionals soon realize that they need more contacts and an expanded network. In short, they need to turn strangers into networking connections starting with introductions through their immediate contacts.

They are many ways to do this but the easiest and most efficient way is online using, initially, email, but, better still, social networking sites. Why social networking sites? They act as a repository of your background and experience for all to see. Think about it, do you want your resume circulating among indiscriminately among all your connections? Not good form really.

Opportunity Management

Herein lies the ROI for extending your brand online. You want new connections to find you and think favorably of you? The simplest way to do that is with a well branded presence online through social media tools, social networks, and even a website which is basically an online brochure where you control the marketing message instead of Linkedin et al. They happen to be very inexpensive, simple, elegant and easy to do with a more professional presentation than the social networks.

Given the inordinate competition for every opening and opportunity, doing making an effort to market, position and differentiate yourself online is a necessity. How else can you make a great first impression when you aren’t even there? How else can you reach out to new connections in tangential industries and sectors and show then that your abilities would be of value and your background would not be incongruent to their products and services.

By providing your existing network with a link to your beautifully branded social networking profiles like Linkedin, Viadeo, Facebook, etc , or your website or blog, you have provided an online marketing brochure not just a resume.

Reputation Management

A further case for extending and managing your brand online is if you don’t do it, others will do it for you. You must build your brand online for reputation management. If and when you are introduced to new potential connections by your connections, almost 50% them according to Fortune magazine statistics, will Google your name to get more information and background on you.

What shows up? The company you have been buried in for over ten years? If you are good, at personal branding and marketing perhaps a couple conference papers or presentations will surface. But are they in the sector where you were or where you want to be?

Your online visibility could be as innocuous and empty as one of my clients where absolutely nothing about him showed up except for a 12 year old paper he wrote at university about insects and crop rotation. It didn’t help his search cause at all since he is in the mobile telecom sector now.

Managing your reputation online is crucial to a search or career transition. Networking connections need to see you branded for your future position not where you have been. You cannot leave your contacts to their own devices as what they say about you. Using all the sites and tools mentioned above to create visibility and exposure is a given for a networking job search.

And the Music Plays On

I have heard some people say that the economy is not correcting it is reset. They say that the world that we knew before 2008 is nevermore. If that is the case then the musical chairs will continue with maybe a few added or more taken away. But the network you grow and the branded self-marketing you do will be the mainstays to see you through it all.

April 14, 2011

Most senior executives are relatively new to the social networking and the social media wave sweeping both the business world and that of professionals in transition. The reaction of some has been one of skepticism and disregard for the value it could offer, and reasonably so. How could a forty million person networking site replace the valuable contacts they already have in place with fellow C-level colleagues? It can’t and it shouldn’t. They can assume that they already know who they need to know and those contacts will open doors and introduce them to others.

It is understandable that high performing, highly successful professionals who have gotten all their positions through colleagues, mentors and connections may not understand the value of LinkedIn to their brand. LinkedIn’s most overlooked and obvious function is to augment our brand with free online publicity in the world’s largest yellow pages known as Google. Every executive needs to build their professional brand visibility online because that’s where everyone goes to snoop on their background and track record before meeting them. According to a 2007 survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet reveals that “more than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates”. Doing a Google name search brings up first and foremost a professional’s LinkedIn profile because of the way Google has set its search algorithms.

I suppose one could leave it to chance as to what comes up under your name on Google but why take that risk when a few simple steps can immensely improve your online first impression and professional brand by creating a compelling professional profile on LinkedIn?

Creating Your Profile as a Marketing Brochure

LinkedIn is not your resume, though it is designed to entice you to think thus. Falling into the long chronological litany of a resume-style profile on LinkedIn does not do anyone’s brand justice. Leave out dated and irrelevant work experience to focus attention on the most salient part of your experience. Do not go into long detail rather keep the descriptions to titles and companies and perhaps a one-liner overview of your scope of responsibility. But do use every feature, application and tool offered by LinkedIn as they makes sense for your particular situation.

Writing a Branded Summary

Many make the mistake of omitting the Summary portion in LinkedIn by simply not noticing it in their rush to fill the work history portion that LinkedIn provides. Others resort to dumping the top part of their resume into that section. As it bears the same category title (Summary) often used at the top of a resume it may appear to be a logical thing to do but it is not good branding. A well branded LinkedIn Summary reads more like a narrative that one would read about a conference presenter, or the back of the flap bio of a book author. It is engaging, personable and interesting not a dry litany of canned business buzz words about P&L, M&A, negotiations, revenues, product launches, market share, cost cutting- data that every top performer can recite. That’s not to say this information is not necessary but it needs to be couched in branded terms that differentiates you from the other executives in this economy seeking the very same opportunities that you are.

Making Recommendations Count

For an accomplished executive, employed or unemployed, to have a litany of recommendations on LinkedIn may at first blush appear overkill, redundant, or vainglorious. Your reputation stands without others having to reiterate or reinforce that one is highly competent, qualified, successful and proven. Or does it? This is certainly a situational decision unique to each person on the quantity, type and character of the recommendations that they use on LinkedIn or not. However, more often than not, others are better at extolling our virtues and accomplishments than we are. Further, recruiters readily admit to being more interested in what others say about potential candidates than what the candidate says about his or herself.

Just as importantly, writing selected recommendations not just for those who ask but unbidden for those who count will boost your brand in the process. If you are connected to high profile, well-placed, powerful business professionals that you know on LinkedIn, then saying good things about them reflects well upon yourself as well as builds their appreciation.

Using Applications to Demonstrate Your Unique Abilities

Fred R. Barnard in Printers' Ink, 1927, promoting the use of images in advertisements said that, "One Picture is Worth Ten Thousand Words." We could add that Amazon book recommendations, SlideShare presentations, Google Doc white papers or Typepad blog posts will do the same for your LinkedIn Profile. Rather than using hundreds of words to describe your talent, abilities and uniqueness, providing actual demonstrations will make a more credible impression. The applications serve as testimonials to what you say about yourself. In December 2008, LinkedIn launched its Applications which are simply links to professional tools accessible to anyone online.

Those who had been blogging using Typepad or Wordpress, posting slides to Slideshare and articles to Google Docs just had to click on the LinkedIn buttons to make them show up in their profiles. For the rest of us, it is a process of expanding our presence online using these social media tools and then linking them back to LinkedIn. It is definitely harder to ignore blogging when it can build your brand value on LinkedIn.

You Say It’s Your Birthday?

After six long years discouraging people from posting any personal information such as an address, or phone number, last month LinkedIn created a section called, yes, Personal Information. You now can announce the date of your birthday, marital status, address and phone number. Leveraging this new category into brand building is of dubious merit at the moment. It seems more like your effort should be in avoiding the pitfalls of that arise from giving personal disclosure such as age discrimination, and invasion of privacy.

Using the Polls and Events functions to ask people to vote on business issues or let everyone know of upcoming events you are attending makes more business sense than providing the date of your birth. Since LinkedIn seems to have a solid relationship with Google, then videos and photo galleries cannot be far behind. We had better start preparing our YouTube channels now.

The bottom line, personal branding using LinkedIn is a constantly moving target with new tools, widgets and applications to use that didn’t exist a month ago. We are challenged to take what will work for each of us to grow and expand our image, visibility and self-marketing online.

April 01, 2011

Did the title catch your attention and draw you into the article? Now that’s a good headline, the way yours should be written under your name on Linkedin. I am sure you know the kind: a real zinger, catchy, enticing, yet professional and not boring like a job title and company name would be.

The title, however, was not intended to entice you but merely to announce what will soon be reality. Perhaps it is somewhat of an exaggeration but not by much. Let’s modify it: the resume as you and I know it will be extinct, obsolete, and dead in less than 3 years - expedited by the recession. Yes, that’s safe to say.

What would cause that? How many times have you printed and mailed by regular post your resume to an employer or faxed your resume recently? However, there are multiple copies of your resume are online, including BlueSteps, and posted on job boards (as ineffective as they are who can resist them?) as well as emailed resumes to companies and colleagues who forward them by email to others. It is the evolution of technology has created the change in our actions.

The Resume as Webpage

When does it stop being a resume and start being a webpage? It already has because it is primarily read on a screen. Nobody prints it until you walk in the door and by then it has done its job, right? Terms like a one page resume and stacks of resumes are all obsolete because there are no stacks or pages, just databases and links. How can you measure the length of document that has links to multiple other sites of information (see insert below for example)?

But, it is simply insufficient to have a resume remain as an online pseudo page on a screen. If that was the case, we would be buying our subscription to the New York Times online, ads and all – with no more newsprint on our fingers. It is obviously not such a simple trade off. Resumes, like many products and services the Internet has touched in the past 20 years, are being transformed by the inherent nature of the technology. Marshall McLuhan was right.

"The medium is the message" is a phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan meaning that the form of a medium embeds itself in the message, creating a symbiotic relationship by which the medium influences how the message is perceived. The phrase was introduced in his most widely known book, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, published in 1964.[1] McLuhan proposes that media itself, not the content it carries, should be the focus of study. He said that a medium affects the society in which it plays a role not only by the content delivered over the medium, but also by the characteristics of the medium itself. Wikipedia, 2009

In the Web 1.0 days the Internet was populated with what was called euphemistically “brochure ware and shopping carts,” meaning datasheets, brochures, and catalogs. The Web 2.0 Internet, due to enhanced tools and delivery capability, has enabled multiple kinds of content modalities.

On a Web 2.0 website, you may watch a video, listen to a podcast, move through a set of slides, download a PDF file, fill out a form, take a poll, add a comment, share in a chat, add a friend, send a text message and RE Tweet. Can a resume remain for long a static script of line after line of text in this environment?

What are the implications to your job search, and to managing your career? The resume as we knew it is functionally obsolete online. Web 2.0 technology demands that we shift from our traditional preconceptions of what a resume should look like, and how it should be accessed. This is no trivial trend to be dismissed. Given the global competition for work and the commoditization of talent at all levels, how well you use Web 2.0 tools to brand and differentiate will give you the edge. Here are some initial ideas and areas to help you to step out of the resume box.

Visualcv

If you want to see the Web 2.0 replacement of the resume, just visit www.visualcv.com . Interestingly, the term curriculum vitae or CV for short means a written account of one’s life. A resume is a condensed presentation from the French past participle, “résumé”, to summarize.

Visualcv doesn’t expect a summary of your abilities, and accomplishments but rather a well- branded elaboration multimedia expansion of them. It allows you to build your self-presentation using video, audio, graphs and charts, slides, photos, illustrations, articles, white papers, and work samples. In addition, you can add logos of your current and former employers, links to blogs, and relevant websites, testimonials and endorsements.

There are other sites that offer similar services including Emurse, Doodlebit, WebResumePlace, and InteractiveResumeServices. Some, like Emurse, can’t seem to move past the notion of a resume as a piece of paper, while the others go the distance. Whatever it is called: a visual vitae, professional portfolio, webfolio, it certainly is no longer a resume as we know it.

Linkedin.com et al

This 6 year old granddaddy of the online resume website, has slowly but surely seen the light and moved to expand your opportunity to present a full-blown professional profile. With the addition of the Applications feature late fall of 2008, Linkedin expanded member Profile pages to encompass a breath and depth of someone’s abilities and accomplishments beyond its initial fill-in the blanks modules.

Overnight, you could upload slides and presentations through Slideshare and Google Presentations. You can now link Google Docs to your Profile that enables white papers, work examples, case studies, and articles to be displayed. Amazon book lists lets you display your knowledge and acumen through sharing all the great books you have read.

Another Applications feature is the blog links to Wordpress and Typepad. I already had a blog and a newsletter on the Typepad platform, thus my blog posts and articles were easily linked to my Profile with one mouse click. Displaying knowledge of your industry, marketplace, and business by blogging about it is a natural extension and enhancement to your professional profile.

The sum total of all these Applications is that it transforms Linkedin’s original fill-in-the-blank, static, linear Profile cum resume into an embellished, expanded and elaborated professional portrait providing a wealth of information and deeper insights into a professional.

All of the above applies to the other social networking sites with variations on the theme. Be it Facebook, Viadeo, Ecademy, Xing or Orkut, any social networking site expects you to present a profile of yourself to the world. Wherever you have the opportunity to communicate, demonstrate, share and connect online, you are putting your persona and professionalism on display. It is the new resume. It is at your peril that you avoid doing this because recruiters, hiring managers and search firms are seeking talent more in those sites. You can be selective, discriminating such as building visibility on sites such as BlueSteps but you still have to show up.

Zoominfo.com

Zoominfo should be separated out for two reasons. One, recruiters seem to love to peruse it as they expect to uncover a more candid expose of a person. Two, you are on it already so you have no choice but to manage your professional presentation on the site.

Zoominfo uses the same type of software as CardScan that scans information off a business card and reads it into a contact management system like Outlook. Zoominfo scans the Internet and scrapes off information about people and builds profiles about them on its website. You are already on Zoominfo, if you have had any length of time on the planet functioning as an adult.

Zoominfo is indiscriminate. It scrapes anything with your name attached to it: SEC filings, company bios, keynote addresses, church bulletins, little league team rosters, the green couch you sold on Craigslist…anything and everything. You could find a motley collection of the flotsam and jetsam of your life or nothing much of anything.

One professional found that her boss had usurped her profile, or Zoominfo had miss-attributed all her achievements. Further, your profile, much like a mangled credit report on Experian, could have information about multiple people with the same name.

Zoominfo is the malapropos vitae with unintended consequences. But you can rectify that by skillful editing, and inserting your own branded content.

Blogs: Typepad, Blogger, WordPress

Blog platforms are ideal to create, not just a blog, but a vitae that is even more personalized, interesting and even intimate. Unlike, Visualcv and the social networks that provide the look and feel, you create the color scheme, the look and the layout on a blog. This is your opportunity to truly express your personality, style, and branded image completely. There is no conforming to the requirements of any service provider. No boxes to fill in or an online genie to tell you that your profile is only 50% complete.

You can stretch beyond the social networking profiles, the multimodal resume sites and fully present a professional portfolio of yourself using a blog platform. Now that’s awesome and really scary. It implies that you are clear on your brand, your target market and value proposition and are able to articulate in color, sound, video, design, word, and layout who you are. If you need help doing this, get help. But the more hands-on you are with the process, the more authentic will be the outcome.

Typepad in fact gives its subscribers a tutorial on how to turn a blog into a resume page. Wordpress, an open source application, is so versatile that many people are using it to build entire websites. The advantages of these platforms are their low cost to build and maintain, their high Google ranking, and the facility of updating the site content without learning HTML.

Of course blogs are used for writing posts that build your participation in the community of your peers, and business sector. Each blog post is an active, dynamic form of vitae building. Every entry serves to better demonstrate, and draw attention to your credentials, knowledge and expertise than the passive data on a resume. It is one thing to say that you are highly strategic and analytical on your resume even with a past example, but to actually demonstrate those skills in the blog that you write is by far the better route.

The Resume is Not Dead it is Simply Transfigured

This trend to multimodal, multimedia, multiplatform online elaboration and expansion of your professional self will only continue to grow while ensuring the death knell of the resume. As search firms, recruiters, and employers use ever more thorough, and granular searches online to uncover the top candidates and stars they seek, they will look well beyond a simple bland resume format. Technologists will continue to develop more innovative tools and amazing technologies, and you know the saying, “If they build it, we will find a way to apply it.”

Finally, your competition will adopt and implement all these tools and techniques and you will have no choice but to keep up. But why not be ahead of the curve? Consider Malcolm Gladwell’s premise in the Tipping Point, that once a critical mass is reached, a direction becomes inevitable. So it will go with the resume now.

March 16, 2011

Why is it that lining up to buy tickets, going to the dentist or initiating a job search are rarely approached with enthusiasm, gusto and exhilaration? Have you ever heard anyone say, “Oh boy, I get to stand in line for an hour!” or “I am so excited about my root canal!” and “I am just delighted to have to do a job search!”? No, neither have I. In some cases, the means to the end are not nearly as satisfying as the end itself. The old adage of enjoy the journey doesn’t apply for most of us when it comes to a job search.

The problem is magnified in a down economy, when starting out on the wrong foot can derail the whole job search process. In good times when your friends and contacts open doors for you to walk through or search firms clamor to contact you, an actual job search is irrelevant. To compound matters since 2003, Social Media tools are changing the job search landscape beyond recognition, making tools and processes obsolete within months.

Who would have thought that the top executive search firms would establish a formidable online presence to provide a full menu of career services and connections to executive job seekers?

In the spirit of this new era, here is how to approach a job search with some new twists and updates. If you are just starting out on a search, see how you can start off on the right foot.

Determine the Focus and Direction of Your Next Career

Who was it that said life is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration? The point is that laying out the ground work for a search is a huge amount of work but it does start with that 1% of inspiration. As in any business endeavor, you need start with a clear direction in mind and that is no different for a job search. This is actually the optimum time to re-examine your career to determine and affirm your next direction. Take some time to take stock of your accomplishments and achievements, and review the application of your strengths and talents thus far. How will you want to direct or redirect your career?

A clear focus and direction is required to open the right doors. Too often the mistake is made to want to be a generalist and leave options open for whatever comes your way. This is far less viable in a recession. Companies are looking for a specific set of skills and experience for a position. While they may consider a broad background of experience as desirable, you have to hit their requirements as exactly as possible.

Layout a Goal-Driven Strategy and Build a Plan to Get There

Typically, the knee-jerk reaction is to rush out and tell all your contacts that you are looking, alert your search firm contacts, and then end up with few leads, a burned up network and not much to show for it. As Dennis Hopper, the actor says in the Ameritrade ad, “You got to start with a plan”. Then you drive your goals by search milestones to reach in getting your job hunt “to do” list done.

Yes, a job search is by nature ambiguous because no one, not even you, will know where you will eventually end up. Consider it a safari. You may be looking to bag a lion but end up with a bear instead. Though that’s the nature of the game, you still have to lay out a detailed accurate plan with maps and a cargo list to conduct a successful safari.

The same goes for your job search today only the list is now much longer than it was a decade ago due to the dramatic changes the Internet has wrought on how people are sourced and hired. Your plan begins with market research. What’s the market for you out there nowadays? What are the trends in your field and you up to date with them? What sectors tangential to your current one are growing?

Your plan includes all your self-marketing collaterals in print and online as well online social networks, social media tools and other web-based resources. There is no point in calling up anybody unless you have your built your brand and extended it online, with sectors targeted and the kind of opportunity you want identified in general terms.

Your plan must have a strategy for how you are going to leverage your current network to expand it to new sectors, and new people. You cannot afford to rely just on who you already know as that may not be enough to see you through.

Of course your plan must take into account a global search, though you will probably be still working locally. Companies from many countries seek and hire executives worldwide now. Your strategy must account for this by identifying and implementing the growth of your network both locally and globally, vertically and horizontally.

Gone are the days when a well written resume, and a decent cover letter, would carry the day. Your resume has to not just be well written but it has to have a good user interface because most people will be looking at it on a computer screen. Good layout and graphic design skills come into play not to mention the new multimedia additions of video blogs, podcasts, links to slides and documents of your entire body of work. Visit www.visualcv.com and participate in this new world of multimodal, interactive resumes.

Though self-marketing begins with your resume as online talking paper, it doesn’t end there. Your profiles on social networking sites such as Linkedin.com and Zoominfo.com can be deal-breakers if not done correctly. In recent survey, 83% of recruiters and 45% of professionals looked up someone’s name in a Google search after receiving their resume or referral. Obviously, now your brand visibility online is crucial in today’s job market.

Develop Your Networking Scripts

Assuming you did a thorough review of your accomplishments, skill sets and how you would like to apply them next then your task is to create a versatile elevator pitch that articulates your value proposition to a breath of audiences. Before you contact even your closest associates, if you have a clear, scripted, well-focused pitch you will generate far better results. Further, good scripts on your side will better manage the relationship and keep the ball in your court. Too often a phone call starts with a brief “I am looking” to which they respond, “Send me your resume” and you do, and that’s the end of it. Scripts replace resumes with stories your contacts can take action on in your behalf.

Put Your Current Database in Order and Start Drilling into Your Network of Contacts

If you don’t know who to ask for what, your database of contacts is useless to you. Build a complete and thorough database of all your contacts in your field and sector. Categorize them by geography, position, groups, products, etc. Then figure out who you are going to ask for what. The thing not to ask for is job opening as few if any people have those top of mind. They will pass on your resume to a likely contact and they are done with you. Asking for introductions to people, information and data at their disposal, or resources they can provide makes the best use of contacts.

Also, by not asking for a job, you don’t wear out your welcome. Your search could take awhile with many twists and turns. If you keep coming back asking for job leads they might start to wonder about your viability in the world of work. If you continue to ask for resources, information, and more introductions you simply appear busy, engaged, and involved in projects, and business. There is an art to this process, which you can miss in your anxiety to get the search over and get on with a new role.

Building out Your Network

How many professional associations to you belong to? Are you active in your alumni associations? How much have you extended your online network beyond a small circle of colleagues? Are you known in your profession? It is a long, slow and steady process to accumulate connections and grow a network of varied and valuable relationships. The good news is that everybody wants to do it. You are not the only executive seeking fellow professionals to connect with. Linkedin.com among a plethora of social networking sites has 40 million users for that reason. Your challenge is to stick with the plan. Remember the plan you made? Target your networking to those in your field, your sector and adjacent affinity groups. A random or scattered network is simply not effective. A related interconnected network leverages itself on your behalf because everybody knows somebody else.

Working Your Company List

Too often we chase job postings as low hanging fruit assuming that if they are posted that’s all that’s open. Wrong. In a recession most positions tend not to be posted but rather created for the right candidate when the need arises. You are challenged to find those opportunities through search firms, and networking connections. Starting with a list of about 40 companies (big, middle, and emerging) that are in a sector or family of sectors, you must direct a lazar focus on making connections, not finding job postings. When working with a list of companies , your next questions will always be, “who do I know there” and “who can I get to know there?” Correlate your list with the applicable openings that your executive search firm contacts may have at the ready as well.

Setting up a Schedule

It is a given that you will use every digital tool you can find to manage your database, your contacts, appointments, and your time. Tools that I find useful include Addressgrabber.com to grab contact information out of websites and emails, ClearContext.com to keep my Outlook inbox in order, WEMEUS.com as my personal CRM system to stay in touch, send out announcements, etc. I am sure you will find many more online and by asking friends that will create efficiencies and expedite your search. The point is that you need to do everything possible to set up a routine, and schedule that keeps you on track and moving forward. Make sure you are meeting people weekly in person or by phone.

Get Help

Reading this article is a form of getting help. The problem is that you don’t know what you don’t know. So where do you begin? It used to be so simple, but there would not be a burgeoning career coaching business if it was now. A professional career coach can bring you up to speed on the ins and outs of using Twitter and other online tools, the latest techniques for writing resumes, and how to put together an effective search in an online/offline global economy that is on the way to recovery yet. They can keep you honest with yourself and act as a sounding board and guide to your search plan and strategy.

Wash, Rinse, Repeat

Actually all of the above is now a never-ending process just with less intensity after you land a position. You can no longer afford to lag behind technologies, trends and the social media tools. The new world of finding jobs has just begun and may not even be recognizable in 20 years.

February 09, 2011

As a species we are frequently oblivious and often adverse to change, thus we seen to be continually astounded when it happens. Never is this truer than when pink slips fly and downsizing begins.

Regardless of position or level there is an underlying belief system in place that, “it could never happen to me.” This denial of the inevitable can be the strongest the highest executive suites, especially for founders or longtime CEOs. Losing power, leaving office, stepping down from a station in life, ending a lifetime career can be powerfully disorienting. When the time comes for making a well-done exit, emotional derailers, and inappropriate actions can have a negative impact on a graceful departure. Basically, we botch it up.

Here are some pragmatic tips to help you come to grips with saying goodbye. Generic and general in nature, they should be applied and modified to individual circumstances.

Coming to GripsThis is a glass half empty approach. Assume the worst, prepare for it and then act on the best scenario in the meantime. Look at it this way, if you don’t do anything to prepare for leaving and if it does happen, it will be harder to deal with. If you setup an exit strategy in advance, you may never have to use it but it is always there. This reminds one of all the bomb shelters people built in their back yards in the USA in the 1950’s. Nobody ever had to use them and alternatively they made a good get-away for dad to have an occasional poker game with the guys and not disturb the family.

What do you need to do in advance to prepare for the potential of layoff, firing, and, yes, someday retirement? What do you need to handle in terms of money, connections, alternative plans, data and communications to make your exit a breeze?

Clean SweepA prominent West Coast think tank hired a new CEO to shake things up which resulted in buildings being sold and the corporate headquarters being relocated down the block. Executives with 10-20 years residency in the same office found themselves uprooted and moved to smaller quarters with less storage. The accumulated detritus and debris collected over time was overwhelming to sort through and discard. Fortunately, they had six months forewarning. Will you have the same time should corporate priorities shift out from under you? Scanning, downloading onto a laptop and otherwise backing up valuable career documents is a proactive not reactive exercise. Start now.

GuiltIt is far easier emotionally to receive a dream job offer that liberates you from a position you detest. Since that only happens in the movies or to an unknown few, more likely you will be offered a good opportunity with potential while you are more or less satisfied where you are. Accepting a new position may be potentially fraught with a certain amount of self-recrimination. It is normal to question leaving a team that needs you, a CEO who supports you, and a company that appreciates and rewards you.

Hopefully, the choice to stay or go is based more on your own career development than the needs of the organization. Never, ever forget the simple truth that if the shoe was on the other foot, you would be out the door as expeditiously as your severance package permitted. Guilt, unlike greed, is a fleeting emotion. Manage your feelings by resigning appropriately, considerately, adhering to the customs and dictates of your current organization’s culture.

Saving FaceSelf-inflicted or imposed by others, leave-taking is a delicate and nuanced dance among many dynamics and different constituencies. It is important that you leave no burnt bridges, and minimize damaged egos. Even the most enlightened manager can take a departure personally and feel affronted when a subordinate resigns. You may want to tell them all to, “get over it.” However, you must think of the long run while you handle the short term. Do it right now and it won’t come back to haunt you later.

No one wants their job made more difficult, burdensome and complex. Your leaving may have that impact on colleagues, direct reports, customers, vendors and management. Face it, your skills, talents, and expertise will be hard work to replace, even if you felt unrecognized, unacknowledged and unrewarded. Recruiting and training is costly especially at the highest executive levels. Furthermore, accommodating a new employee into the fold will be an emotional adjustment and financial cost to the organization in terms of lost productivity and opportunity. You goal is to make everybody look good on your way out the door.

It is your obligation to ensure that the transition as easy as possible on all concerned even if that means giving a longer notice as you would like or offering to consult to your replacement. Look at it as paying forward, because someday all the professionals you left behind will be your references.

GratitudeRichard Bolles, the author of the perennial bestselling book, What Color is Your Parachute?, said, “if you don’t thank God for you what you already have received, why do you expect him to give you anything further?”. Even if you are not religious, he has a point.

Demonstrating appreciation and thankfulness for what one has received certainly leaves a better lasting impression on co-workers and bosses. Farewell parties are the organization’s way of thanking you for your contribution as are severance packages and other exit benefits. We often neglect to return the favor.

The best thing you can do to ensure a good goodbye is to thank each and every person you have worked with. It will give them and you closure beyond measure as well as make you memorable, because so few do it. This may be the hardest task to accomplish during hard times, downsizing, and unplanned exits. But putting aside old resentments, reaching out to friend and foe alike, and extending a hand of gratitude will be a goodbye well said.

January 18, 2011

Optimism may be the perfect spring tonic for any professional seeking new employment. It is the internal, intangible factor that can give us the edge to enhance job search success. Though some say optimism clouds the reality of a serious, grave situation, it is actually denial and fear that blinds us deters us from taking action especially in times of crisis.

Optimism is an internal compass that guides us forward, responding to life in ways that are helpful and constructive to ourselves and those around us. What if we don’t have an inner compass that points to optimism? What attributes can we adopt to engender the ability to feel optimistic and weather a long job search, a tough economy, and the loss of savings and security?

Perspective: Are we putting our work and life in proper perspective?

Being able to step back to put work and money in its proper place in our lives can clear the fog of fear from our minds. Perspective enables us to see a bigger picture, understanding that while our situation is not unique our approach can be. Perspective, grounded in reality, allows us to go the conventional wisdom of what constitutes a life well-lived. It enables us to consider the road less travelled, return to forks in the road to re-choose again, and optimistically see beyond seeming catastrophes.

Affinity: Are we building affinities with others beyond our immediate circle?

A willingness to see and appreciate the inherent value of others, including strangers, can engender our sense of affinity. We never know who will introduce us to the next great deal. This is the time to reach out to broader networks and create relationship, collaboration and community beyond our comfortable, known circles of influence. Studies on social networking by Stanford University professor, Mark Granovetter, have shown that door-opening opportunities come our way when we move beyond our inner circles of family, friends and colleagues to the outer rings of new connections. Affinity breeds optimism because it is contagious.

Responsibility: Are we choosing to respond and act with immediacy?

The loss of a lifetime career, income and title can put many of us into a negative emotional tailspin. Grieving is a natural part of the process assimilates change and loss at a psychic and emotional level. We grieve the loss of intangibles: leading and working with great teams, the status of title and rank, acknowledgements from customers, and seeing the results of our ideas and efforts come to fruition.

Responsibility is the antidote to pull us up out of prolonged grieving and move us forward again. It is a full and conscious ownership of our current immediate situation. Putting aside the past where negative feelings reside allows us to respond, the root of responsibility, and take action with optimism.

Resiliency: Are we making lemonade out of lemons?

Resiliency is the ability to act positively, creatively, and realistically to whatever life throws at you. The attribute of resiliently, means taking whatever life brings and make the most of it regardless if is not what was hoped for, expected, or wanted. Resiliency is optimism manifested out in the world.

Options: I am, therefore, I am optimistic

Reams of how-to books have been written about resumes, interviewing, networking and job searching. We may become very adept and skilled at executing the mechanics of a search but unless our inner compass is wired to an optimistic bent, it can be all uphill slogging. Remember how we are told to act enthusiastic during an interview and while networking? Inner optimism makes acting unnecessary as we naturally exude a positive countenance.

No one can wave a magic wand and make us naturally optimistic but practicing perspective, approaching people with affinity, taking responsibility, and drinking a lot of lemonade might do the trick.

January 03, 2011

Organizational mergers and downsizing often brings in a new management team that rearranges the org charts to the disadvantage of the remaining executives. You may soon be reporting to someone, new to the company, who views you as an unknown quantity. You previous manager’s support, and mentoring, as well as your secure and protected position may soon be nostalgic memories. Are you adequately prepared to jockey for position and status with a new boss? What are the best steps to take lay the groundwork for a successful relationship?

Sometimes vacating the field of play is the better part of valor. Take the time for reflection on your job options and a review of long and short-term career goals. What is your career direction for the next 5 to 10 years? Which would better serve you, staying or going?

Immediately evaluate the politics of your situation to determine your timing and action plan rather than waiting to see what happens. Typically, new management brings in their own team and replaces the holdovers from the prior management. Why risk being marginalized or terminated when you can strategically make changes in advance?

You may be able to arrange a shift within the organization before the new management takes control. Making a pre-emptive job move can mitigate the risk of a negative association with the previous management and even extend your term of employment. However, at senior professional levels this may not be feasible.

Alternatively, you can make a concerted effort to proactively steer your relationship with the new management in the most positive direction possible. How can you develop a favored or at least neutral relationship? This takes analysis, preparation, and a willingness to let go of any residual attachment and loyalty to the former executives. A negative attitude can stand in the way of creating affinity.

Begin with searching Google to uncover background information on the new management such as employment history, education, accomplishments, and personal data. What style of company culture has formed your new manager? They will bring a way of doing things that draws from previous successes in other organizations. How do those cultures differ from your company? Are you able to recognize the differences and, most importantly, accommodate them?

In addition to business background, the details of personal avocations, passions, and affiliations can enable casual conversation on topics of mutually shared interests albeit perhaps newly acquired on your side. Shared non-business interests can establish a bond of rapport and understanding that facilitates the business side of the relationship equation.

At your initial meeting, proffer a one-page well-branded executive summary to provide an accomplishments overview beyond the litany of a resume. Let the summary position your contributions as indispensably useful to your new manager. Your agenda in all early conversations is to demonstrate a willingness to be on-board with new executive team. Avoid career kiss-of-death comments such as, “we already tried that” or “we have always done it this way”.

Guide your manager’s opinion of you in a favorable direction, with your demonstrated enthusiasm for their ideas, and buy-in to their goals. A new executive wants to succeed, hit the targets and establish themselves solidly. Align yourself with their goals clearly and directly and you will win regardless.

Finally, to not have a back-burner job search at the ready to heat up if all your efforts fail to build a positive relationship with new management would be foolhardy as you may very likely need it.

December 13, 2010

Stormy economic times with record-setting volatility and financial upheavals have prompted many executives to voice concern over ongoing well-being and vitality of your careers. The questions have focused on how to acquire Career Insurance, those specific strategies and tactics that protect and safeguard your career in difficult times.

Where do you begin? If not in an active search, I recommend looking at upgrades to your professional network. Start with a SWOT analysis of your network focusing on the quality, breadth and trust of your connections. Consider the following questions and, more importantly, evaluate the efficacy of your responses.

Do you have an established presence and relationship with people who can make a difference for your career growth and development? The quality of these relationships can ultimately determine your next promotion or position. Are they at the right level and function both inside and outside the company? They need to be in a position to make introductions and open you to new opportunities. Where do you need to reinforce and buttress these connections? Is your network not just deeply embedded within your sector, but broad enough to move you out of your industry or service should it start on a downhill trajectory? Making career moves among companies within a sector, such as within consumer-packaged goods or financial services, is relatively easy compared to breaking out of the sector. This presumes that you have targeted alternate sectors that pique your interest. Cultivating strategically placed connections that act as a bridge into a new sector or industry is more than career insurance; it could be a career lifeline. Are those contacts global as well as local?

Can you count on your contacts? Can they count on you? Do you trust them to come through for you with their resources, introductions, and leverage? During times of business adversity, having relationships that are not just able but willing to offer or share safe haven is priceless. Consistently in turbulent times, executives turn to the known (not the unknown) for resources and support. They connect to the colleagues at the top of their trust list within and outside their organization and you want to be one of them.

Your next step is to determine how you want to act on your analysis. To build up your career insurance what will you focus on now to bring the greatest return for your unique employment situation? Where can you capitalize on the strength of your network while shoring up the weak connections? How can you exploit opportunities to extend your networking reach into new areas while building deeper confidence and trust with your existing base?

Improving your network is one piece of a well-executed career insurance strategy but it is a key one as you will more likely advance and grow your career by who you know.

February 04, 2010

“It’s time to define a new era. Our faith has been shaken. We’ve lost confidence in our leaders and in our institutions. Our beliefs have been tested. We’ve discredited the notion that the Internet would change everything (and the stock market would buy us an exit strategy from the grind.) Our expectations have been dashed. We’ve abandoned the idea that work should be a 24-hour-a-day rush and that career should be a wild adventure. Yet we are still holding on.”

FastCompany, January 2003

If I hadn’t added the date to the above FastCompany quote you might have assumed that it was current. I had that reaction when I found it in my files last month. I wondered then if we were still defining a new era. Certainly our shaken faith and lost confidence hasn’t recovered nor has our lost IPO/stock option exit strategy. Work is still 24/7 for those that have it while many occupy their time in a 24/7 job search.

Recently, careers viewed as wild adventures such as real estate and Wall Street have paled in retrospect. However, the Internet and the digital age have changed a lot of everything. The Huffington Post listed the 12 things that became obsolete that included telephone calls, classified ads, CDs, landline phones, encyclopedias, hand-written letters, phone calls, yellow pages and address books, wires, dial-up, film cameras and film, catalogs, and fax machines. I would add that road maps, checkbooks, print books and broadcast television are soon to follow.

What is this new era? Though some may take issue, I would define it by loss of things once considered givens (stable employment and financial security), diminished expectations for the realization of career goals (declining job openings and the commoditization of us all), and a wrenching acceleration of economic, demographic and technological change.

So how exactly do we hold on? Here are my suggestions:

Being DifferentApple’s corporate slogan a few years ago was “think different.” All bright, ambitious professionals I know in Silicon Valley have that one down cold as a survival skill. The challenge now is to “be different.” Geoffrey Moore, author of Dealing with Darwin, commented that we are all commodities now and we need to differientiate to stand out and compete.

More professionals are chasing fewer business opportunities and job openings than there are offered and open. Personal branding is not just putting a cool marketing spin on your Linkedin profile and in your resume.

The core of differentiating oneself is to know and articulate our uniqueness. What is it that makes you different, special, and completely unique regardless of your position, level or expertise? We all have our own style and approach and way of being. Further, matching up your uniqueness to the specific company where you would be the perfect fit is a far more effective effort than tossing resumes at job postings along with the multitude of others doing the same.

You really have no choice but to better market, brand and differentiate yourself in this marketplace.

Speaking UniversallyBeing able to effectively communicate across borders, cultures and generations is a career advantage, not just a lip-service acknowledgement to your high school French teacher or a helpful travel tool. Making the effort to understand and be understood requires only an willingness and intention to melt barriers to connection and conversation. If we live in a social networking world then being able to speak to the heart and mind of the listener online and off is requisite. I can’t speak Sanskrit, but I do say “Namaste” and I understand the meaning.

The under age 30 generational cohort, Gen X, has entered the workforce. There are now 4 generations in the workplace: Boomers, Gen Y, Gen X and a few Silent Generation cohort members nearing retirement. Being able to understand the mindset and communicate across multiple generations is a core requirement to manage teams and groups for business success. Adding in distributed and off-shore teams to this mix builds an obvious case for developing a fluency in speaking universally.

Coming up to speed with cultures and generations is ideally though hands on experience, but a good book to read is the seminal work by Strauss and Howe called, “Generations”.

Living EasilyLiving easily not about work-life balance (good luck with that one), living simply, going green or scaling back financially. We have all worked too hard to want to scale back our lifestyles though many who have been downsized face that prospect. Ironically, we buy $5 magazines that guide us on simple living, or how replace decent vinyl flooring to go green with bamboo. Living easily is not what we do, though it may result in different actions and life choices, but, rather, how we approach our work and careers.

Living easily is about letting go of the tightly held reins of our lives, chilling our more and cutting some slack for ourselves and others. It seems normal that we invest a lot of mental, emotional and psychic energy into our work and work relationships. Over time that builds a low level tension in us that is ultimately draining and exhausting. Externally, we are encouraged and rewarded to be invested in outcomes, bottom-lines, and deadlines but we don’t have own them internally.

Striving to reach goals is a process that can be invigorating, but being attached and deeply invested in the outcome is life-killing. Serial entrepreneurs are frequent models of living easily as they love more the challenge of striving rather than the outcome. It is a programmed belief system to believe we can’t allow ourselves to live more easily.

Regardless of the expectations of others, we do not internally have to be at the affect of those expectations.

Need-driven JourneyThe founder and owner of the outdoor clothing retailer, Patagonia, said that the real question to ask now is not “what do I want?” but rather “what do I need?” This is not an argument for living simply or green, but, rather, to ask what is it that you truly need in your life? If the answer is what you have right now, well then, that’s wonderful. But if you would look and see a need, even the demand, from within you for some other direction than the path you are on now, then consider taking it.

In a consumption-driven society, we are programmed to believe that our wants somehow have preference in terms of desirability to needs. We tend to equate needs to basic on a physical level such as food, rest, shelter and most of us have that one down. On another level, a psychological level, needs or drivers are far more complex. Our needs are our deepest passions and emotional drivers. They are the stuff that all the marketing folks tap into to make us think that we want things. But those things we want never satiate our internal needs. Continually wanting, we have mostly tuned out our needs.

It is no wonder that best sellers over the decades have always been books on how to follow our passion, realize our bliss, and fulfill our dreams. These books touch our deepest core needs to be who we are and express that in the world like no Super Bowl commercial can.

As our careers mature, we lose touch with that core knowledge. We become stale, burnt out, or driven by only our wants. There is nothing like a huge recession to bring us up short, stop us in our collective tracks, and bring us back to revisit once again our core drivers, passions and needs.

Perhaps then our choice would be to take the road we need, not want, this time.

These are a few thoughts on how to make it through the next decade. But who knows? We can plan, strategize and make good resolutions only to have history descend on us all. Perhaps keeping a clear focus on what we most value and being as true and authentic to ourselves and others as we possibly can is good enough to hold on….and enjoy the ride.